


Party Police

by whateverliesunsaid



Series: a study in pond [3]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Canon Divergent, F/M, and how it affected their beginning, just general gossip
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:55:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26130754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whateverliesunsaid/pseuds/whateverliesunsaid
Summary: Amy and Rory struggle with outside influences — or, the four seasons of their love.
Relationships: Amy Pond/Rory Williams
Series: a study in pond [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/723672
Kudos: 1





	1. AUTUMN

**Author's Note:**

> A series of short glimpses into four different seasons of their love in different times, spaces and titles.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it's autumn when she fucks it up.

> Fighting through the fog
> 
> I can't believe it rained all summer long
> 
> When every day's a hurricane,
> 
> you know there's something wrong
> 
> — PARTY POLICE, ALVVAYS

The cold humidity of the moss beneath seeped through the coat to find her skin, a shiver pooling in the depth at the bottom of her spine, every droplet filling up the creek until it would overflow up and out towards her extremities. In the meantime of such explosions, however, they laid over the edges of the rock, protected by her thick coat over the back but open to the unsatisfactory column of sunshine that barely stood a chance against the coldness beneath. It was a battle well fought, but thoroughly lost and Amy was its lukewarm prisoner.

  
To be fair, as a human being we are all prisoners of many, many events that border on cataclysmic but upon which we rely to survive. The tender edge between violence and tenderness is what it takes us to slip into existence as a species. One day all that roamed the earth were animals and suddenly one of them was cursed with a genetic variation strong enough to be multiplied, to survive, to outsmart… and to conquer. Whoever that was, they never had a choice to just know or feel that extra quality.

  
It wasn’t even extra, it was simply there. They couldn’t tell it apart from everyone else, they just had it and it sat heavy in the emptiness of their ribcage like a secret they couldn’t even comprehend, let alone communicate. That, and language was yet to be invented. Still, it couldn’t have helped.  
But the nature of secrets is that the least aware you are of it, the more careless you get; suddenly, everybody knows. From the dawn of humanity to now, nothing had changed in that regard. Everybody loves a secret, especially when it’s not theirs.

  
Boy likes girl sounds simple enough when it’s coupled with girl is too busy hanging out with rugby players to notice. Boy moves on. Girl notices? That’s a story worth telling.  
Despite her intention to focus on the song coming off her earbuds, Amy found herself listening to the mechanics of her own breathing torso, the way it wheezed, chilled from within by the autumnal breeze transformed by her lung.

  
(Hear the way I am nothing if not an alchemist, watch how I turn coal into gold—) how easy it is to lose sight of the fact that you’re alive, the ginger realized, and the rustle of the leaves and the mud awakened her to the world beyond, to the fact that she was no longer alone. Amy opened her eyes to find Rory standing unsure a few paces away, his hands stuck inside his coat and his cheeks awfully red. She pulled her earbuds off in time to catch his words:

  
“You’re hiding,” he started, looking around as if to ascertain fully where he’d found her, after all. As if to solve a puzzle he didn’t have the pieces for yet. Most often he didn’t, Amy felt. It was almost as if she was watching him unravel something unknowable, determined to see it through but not quite right for the job. Was anybody out there right for the job of unraveling Amelia?

  
He set his quizzical eyes on her without judgement, which was unbearable as it was and it made Amy look away, pushing her body up into a sitting position in the rock, opening space behind her in which he promptly sat. Back to back, they leaned their weight against one another and Amy folded like origami: pushed her legs up, tucked them between her arms and her torso, chin sitting on her knees. Figuratively, a rock. It wasn’t a good origami.

  
“People are talking.” He prompted, after a while, an invitation sitting quietly under the shade of his words. Amy would not bite.

“They tend to do that.” She offered instead, her voice somewhere between raspy in a cool way and raspy in an i’ve-been-crying way, which was infinitely less cool.

“I’m sorry,” he gave up, as if it was sitting heavy beneath his tongue all along, desperate to be spat out.

“It’s fine.” Amy lied. He wasn’t going to believe it, but it was a good enough try. The wind shook the trees around them, brown leaves giving up easy, swirling motions cruising past her feet.

“Still.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Sorry.” His kindness was almost too much, sending a pang over her chest, a guilt as old as time as she’d done it again: the Invernessian had hurt his feelings with her harshness. She pressed her eyes shut, hoping the whole world would drop dead and when she opened them again, a different scene revealed itself to her. “You shouldn’t mind them, you know. Lies wear off, it’s just gossip. By Sunday it’s going to have gone away.” he sounded almost practical, as if it had nothing to do with his own name. It would’ve been funny if it didn’t have anything to do with hers either.

Amy hummed a noncommittal response and he carried on. “If you want to be alone, I’ll go.” he prompted, uncomfortable and still definitely calm, offering her a lifeline when she needed it most and deserved it the least. God, She was a coward.

“It’s true, you know. I wouldn’t mind it if it weren’t.” Amy made an offer of her own, a muffled mumble but an offer nonetheless while she slid her head down so her forehead sat on her knees and her chin was tucked inwards. It took him long enough to respond that Amy felt the pooling at the bottom of her spine overflow, energy riding the tailcoat of her cowardice and making her skin prickle when he spoke.

“Fuck.”

Yeah, fuck.


	2. winter

It’s winter and he draws his clothes tight around his torso when he walks out the door for good. She follows him almost blindly, pushing out every offense she can think of to push him closer to the edge, hoping he takes a leap of faith that takes him away from her reach for good. He does not know that this is not because she doesn’t love him. Never else has she loved him any more so than then, and precisely because she loves him greatly, desperately, she has to let him go immediately. Or else he’ll be ruined forever — in this, she’d rather be alone.

If nothing else gives her chills, then the sight of their home — where the weight of his departure hangs heavy in the air — does. Amy closes the door behind her hard, the wealth of curses mingling with tears as she runs off to their/her bedroom, flinging herself face forward into the white linens— makeup be damned. 

_ If i let this fight end too soon _ , she had thought earlier,  _ it’d be less minutes i’ll have with him _ . Every hard earned, heartbreaking angry minute of this spat — their final one, she knew before he did — had purpose, so she dragged it as far as it took for it to be irreversible, to taint every good memory with it’s bitterness, for it to last forever. Now, the blanket of silence coated the house thick and cold as if there were cotton balls all over. An amorphous feeling all over her skin, as if there was no floor for her to step on, all she had were clouds to tread upon; unreliable dreams.

Her sobs come out muffled, hard and cutting. Many hours flit on by until she pushes herself off the bed to the bathroom, peeling off her outfit on the way there haphazardly. She doesn’t bother sparing her reflection a glance, instead she sits on the edge of the bath, waiting for it to fill up. Puts soap in mechanically, half aware of her own hands, as if they weren’t really hers. It’s an old feeling, this one. It was this emptiness that had driven her caretakers to take her to the psychiatrists when her imaginary friend didn’t come home.

She sinks into the heat of the bath grateful for the ways in which it scorches her skin and devotes herself to scrubbing all over, making her skin red and raw, if not clean at least sensitive. Constantly reminding her that she’s alive, she’s here and she’s hurting.

The house feels dreadfully silent and far too big. Amy reaches for her phone only once, to check the time but the picture behind it makes her wince and she chucks it across the floor. Whatever.

She wants to call a friend, someone she can confide in, but she refuses to be talked out of her resolve. Talked to, even. So resolute loneliness is the way, really. And she commits to the part. She sleeps her loneliness away, smiles for the cameras when they appear, shows up for work and when the papers show up at her desk she pretends it doesn’t cut her to shreds, it's just  _ being  _ there. The fact that this is a world where they’re allowed to exist at all, papers where Amelia Jessica Pond-Williams and Rory Pond-Williams are considering parting their ways for good. It feels both unreal and extremely necessary.

It doesn’t mean she doesn’t let them sit for a few days until she steels herself with enough vodka to actually sign them. The open windows allow the hard cold wind to swirl in the room, cutting at her, a punishment of the most elemental kind.

* * *

She calls The Doctor more times than she would like to admit. He doesn’t pick up. She makes up explanations, each more terrifying than the last.

* * *

It doesn’t mean that she doesn’t pick up the phone to call Rory several times, remembers the children she can’t give him, the speculation they suffer, the comments she hears. His desire to be a father, as old as himself. And he’d be so good, too. She would be a terrible, awful mum— hell, she already is one. This remembrance alone is good enough to make her turn the phone off. 

He doesn’t call. 

She's not entirely sure how she feels about it, shoots another shot down the hatch and rushes back to the dancefloor where the music is too loud for conversation, with friends who don't bother to reason, to ask or to care. It's better this way.

* * *

He shows up at her job, though. Ice cold and angry, but there for her in a way she can’t stand and she dismisses him with her arrogant ways, with her secret to keep, with her love to bear. He walks out on her so differently than the man he was before the gust of wind the door makes cuts at the thin thread that keeps her sword above her. It cuts straight to her heart.


End file.
